The inventive concepts relate to data decoding, and more particularly, to a devices for decoding input data by using different numbers of child path metrics and a decoding methods using the device.
In wireless communication systems, channel encoding and decoding may be performed to improve the reliability of data transmission. Channel encoding/decoding methods utilizing polar codes may achieve Shannon capacity with low encoding/decoding complexity. By using channel polarization by which bit channels (or subchannels) are polarized into good bit channels and bad bit channels, a polar code may transmit frozen bits having values (for example, zero), known to both an encoder and a decoder, via bad bit channels while transmitting information bits via good bit channels.